When I walked in the door of Homaro Cantu's ING, I honestly had no idea what to expect. I'd been to Moto many times, and to Otom (the previous tenant of the space) once before, but aside from some buzz about miracle berries and a lot of tweets ending in "-ing," I was pretty much in the dark. What I experienced was a potential revolution in restaurant logistics. For all the highfalutin talk about feeding the poor, levitating food and "molecular gastronomy," the real stories of the night were the fun, interesting food cooked by executive chef Thomas Bowman and the incredible machine Cantu has created to run such an immensely complicated restaurant. Food aside, we may be seeing the future of restaurant management at ING. more ›

Back in December, Grubstreet told the world that Homaro Cantu, the culinary mad scientist (and we mean that in the nicest way) behind Moto and Otom was opening a new project. It will be called "ING," and no more information was available. more ›

We were at otom last week checking out some of the offerings of new executive chef Thomas Elliot Bowman, who's slowly but surely transformed the menu from the moto light of his predecessor Daryl Nash to the more traditional bistro fare originally envisioned for the restaurant. otom has a $25 Tuesday tasting menu that is the very definition of value. For an extra $15 you can add wine pairings or you can pair one beer with the menu for $6. more ›

It's easy to forget that, with all the hype recently bestowed to the Violet Hour since it opened months ago (much of it warranted, we'll preface), that this city was already teeming with master mixologists before Toby Maloney blew back into town. Case in point, at the recent "Chicago Iron Bartender" competition, Sepia's Peter Vestinos beat out a packed field including Nacional 27's Adam Seger, Tim Lacey of Spring Restaurant Group, and Otom's James Macknyk... more ›